"Embracing the Mystery" Eighth Sunday after the Epiphany February 27, 2011 1Corinthians 4:1-13
There is a reason people are drawn to the religious. It’s true that we want to make sense of things, often when there are especially difficult things to understand. But what would religion really be if it were all perfectly and easily understood? When it comes to very practical things it’s good that we can understand how things need to be. We’re grateful for all the engineers and scientists and construction workers who know how to build good roads and freeways. Our lives are better when we have an understanding of illness and how to treat it. But these things aren’t only practical, they’re important. Maybe that’s why they’re important, because they’re so practical. I guess before they figured out how to make roads with concrete people were grateful for the dirt roads. Understanding things is a real blessing. But there are things that are important but not what we would think of as practical. There are practical aspects about them, but their essence isn’t practical. It’s more a deep need. There are basic needs like sleep and food. We can’t survive without things like that but those are pretty practical and there’s not a lot of understanding that needs to go into them. We could go through our whole lives with plenty of food and shelter and sleep and live well enough and still not fulfill our deepest needs. We were created for each other, not just to eat and sleep. We are relational beings, brought into being through the love of relationship and for being in relationship with each other. I guess in one sense if you’re going to meet one of your basic needs that’s practical. But it’s not a simple matter of knowing someone. Being in relationship with others is often anything but practical and anything but easily understood. Some people are content with a solitary life and we all need time alone but we are enriched when we are able to entrust our fears and emotions and dreams to someone who loves us for who we are and cares for us even with all of our weaknesses. This is something we can’t fully understand. There are things about it we can understand. And certainly things about it we’d like to understand better. But can you imagine what a loving relationship would be like if you comprehended it in the same way you can the materials and the math and the chemistry and the physics of what’s involved in building roads? There are some things we don’t want to understand fully but rather embrace them. Since relationships are at the core of who we are as people, the mystery of relationship is one of those things. That’s one of the things God is getting at in the Epistle reading. Paul says the called servants of God are stewards of the mysteries of God. Being a steward is easy enough to understand. A steward is a manager, one who takes care of things in a beneficial way. But what are these mysteries? If pastors are stewards of the mysteries of God, what, exactly, are they stewards of? Can you point to those mysteries? Is there a list of them somewhere? When we come to things like these in the Scriptures most of us probably gravitate toward wanting to understand what it is the Scriptures are talking about. Just as a husband may want understand his wife better or a girl understand her boyfriend better many of us would like to know exactly what these mysteries of God are. But just as those in relationships will never fully understand their spouse or boyfriend or girlfriend we will never fully understand these mysteries God has given to us. They are as the word is, mysterious. They are unable to be fully comprehended. So if we can’t fully understand them, what do we do with them? We embrace them. We do the same thing we should do with our relationships: rejoice in them, flourish in them, not break them down into parts where we have a comprehension of them so that they are of practical value. The value of relationships go far deeper then their practical value. They go to the core of who we are and what we need. And that is the same way with the mysteries of God. They are not given to us so that we may pick them apart and intellectually grasp them. They are meant to be embraced. They are given to us so that we may be fulfilled in them. They are given to us so that we may be nurtured in our relationship with Him. And that is the key to the mysteries of God. The key is the relationship we have with God, which is the greatest mystery of all. God originally created us to be in relationship with Him. But we broke that relationship with Him. He has restored us to a relationship with Him. That doesn’t sound so difficult to understand. What is the mystery of it all is that we want no part of it and He has nevertheless loved us in mercy. It’s easy enough to love someone who’s there for you, who loves you. But those who want to have nothing to do with you? Those who seek your harm? Those who are your enemies? This is who we are with God. We want nothing to do with Him. We are, in fact, His enemies. We look to ourselves. We are drawn in on ourselves. We think of what we want, not what God’s will is. We wish for our own satisfaction and fulfillment, not the desires of God’s heart. We have filed in our minds our resume of all the good things we have accomplished and all the people we help but conveniently shred the list of the contemptuous thoughts we have toward others, the selfish desires we have, the actions we don’t do that we should do. That list is very long, it’s a testament to how corrupt we really are that we are so adept at ignoring that file. All our attempts at hanging on to the first file end up making the list of the second one longer. Part of why we can’t comprehend the mystery of our relationship with God is that we do not fully comprehend the depth of our sin and corruption. If we do not believe that we are utterly sinful then we do not fully see our need for God’s grace and mercy. That’s why the only way we can truly get to the heart of God’s relationship with us is to look to the cross. If you don’t fully acknowledge that you are utterly sinful and stand condemned in the sight of God, then look at what occurred on the cross. Jesus, who is God, suffered as the one who is utterly corrupt and sinful. Jesus, who is without sin, suffered the punishment that is deserved by we who are sinful and have committed sin. This is the most profound mystery, we cannot comprehend it. But God has revealed it to us. It is through this that we can then embrace the mysteries of God. When God tells us in His Word that He gives us His mysteries we must see them in light of the mystery of God revealing Himself in the flesh. We can only embrace the mysteries of God when we understand them in light of God suffering in the flesh. God is the creator of the physical things of our lives. God is above them, He is a spiritual being. And yet, He embraced the physicalness of His creation, becoming flesh. That was two thousand years ago. But He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God. When He comes to us now He does it through the physical things of this world, the very things He created. It is a mystery but God comes to us in water in our Baptism. It is a mystery how in that water our sins are washed away. Baptism is not something to intellectually grasp but to embrace. It’s something to rejoice in, that it’s water in which our Lord is coming to us, and forgiving us, and saving us—but it’s not simply water, it’s connected with something of mystery and beyond our ability to comprehend. It’s the very word of Christ, a word that has power to bring things into being and a word that has power to create us anew into an eternal relationship with Him. It’s not something we can understand but God comes to us in bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper. It is a mystery how in that bread and wine our sins are forgiven and our faith is strengthened and we confess a unity among us that cannot be from any sort of intellectual agreement among us. The Lord’s Supper is not something to get our brain cells wrapped around but rather to embrace and celebrate. It’s what our Lord gives us in using bread and wine to deliver Himself to us, His body and blood. It’s a mystery how He does this, but when He takes His word and connects it with the bread and wine we are eating and drinking we are actually receiving Christ our Lord Himself in that eating and drinking. Many people don’t believe this because it’s not possible to make sense of it. But they are missing the mystery. Instead of embracing it they are trying to control God and fit Him into their logical compartments they are comfortable with. These are the mysteries of God. It actually makes sense that He calls them this, because otherwise we might be tempted to get a handle on them. As it is, we can no more get a handle on them than we can the relationships we have with those closest to us. We simply enjoy them and grow in them and nurture them and embrace them. May we do this with the mysteries of God as well. And may we also embrace what this means for our daily lives. On the one hand our Lord gives us eternal life in these very temporal means of grace that are mysteries to us, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. At the same time they have implications for our daily lives that are surprisingly practical. Embracing the mystery of God’s love for us in Jesus we can live in a way where every day we can experience the relief of being able to confess our sins. To acknowledge that we are unworthy of anything from God but receiving everything from Him in His mercy. We can love those in our lives with forgiveness that is freely given rather than react to them in a calculated way, weighing the wrongs they do against us and how much we’re going to put up with. Instead, we can embrace the kind of relationship that does not hold grudges but is patient and forgiving. Where we don’t have to think more highly of ourselves than we ought and not favor ourselves over others. Where we can rejoice in what we have received from God rather than seeking to gain what we feel we lack. Too often we seek understanding because we think we will have a better grasp of things. But some things are meant not so much to be understood but simply to embrace. The things of God are among those things. He gives them to us. We don’t get a hold of them so much as we simply receive them and embrace them. Why would you want to have an intellectual comprehension of God’s love when instead you can experience it? This is why He loves us through His mysteries and why we can embrace the relationship He has brought us into with Him. Amen. SDG -- Pastor Paul L. Willweber Prince of Peace Lutheran Church [LCMS] 6801 Easton Ct., San Diego, California 92120 619.583.1436 princeofpeacesd.net three-taverns.net It is the spirit and genius of Lutheranism to be liberal in everything except where the marks of the Church are concerned. 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